Change and Decay: Chapter 14

UPDATE: Change and Decay now revised and complete at its new blog


Three months later, I was rattling through the puddles, left by fitful September showers, in a draughty hired van. The Sheldons had been flattered to hear how significant their papers were, and had agreed to deposit them with the County Archives for the benefit of researchers. Unable to devise a convincing excuse not to renew my acquaintance with the family, I had been deputed to drive over to collect them. I was alone; my absence from the office had required careful juggling of staff leave and meetings to ensure that the search room could stay open. Knowing the conditiosns of the storeroom at the Hall, I was dressed in overalls.

As I slowed the van and turned off into the drive, I was overwhelmed by memory- not long ago the place had been unknown to me, its secrets safely buried. My heart sank as I saw the cars lined up in the stable yard, suggesting that the family was present in force today.

My knock was answered, as before, by distant barking, but Margaret's subsequent apperarance at the door was heralded by a lone dog this time. She explained briefly that Rugger's legs had failed, not that this prevented him from eating or barking. Her manner was slightly confused, as if my arrival were unexpected; but she led me through to Charles' lair. Charles also seemed uneasy.

"I'm afraid we've brought you here on a wild goose chase - I had meant to write to explain, but you know how it is. You did a great job with our stuff, you know - we never realised how valuable it all was! If we had, we might have looked after it better."

"It'll be safe enough in our strongroom," I said.

"That's the thing, you see. The estate has a hard time breaking even these days - I don't have to tell you, you've heard about all this before. But I mentioned to Lord Durston that the papers were on their way to you, and he put me in touch with Crevitts - the dealers, you know."

Indeed I did know; they were renowned for splitting up archives into saleable chunks and auctioning them piecemeal. Archivists shared grim stories of wax seals being snipped off; postage stamps removed; unmarketable manuscripts thrown away.

"Robert Crevitt came up personally last week. He seemed most impressed. Made me an offer on the spot - took the whole lot. He said the Americans would lap it up."

There was little I could say. I toyed with the prospect of hinting at the difficulty of obtaining export licences, but I knew that unless we were prepared to match the price obtained by Clevitts this would delay the sale, not reverse it.

"Still," Charles continued, cheering up markedly now the awkwardness was out of the way, "I see it as a good turn from my ancestors - helping us out once more."

***

As I unlocked the van, Jeremy emerged from the estate office. He seemed to be in a good mood.

"Thanks for your help with the New Mill land- I've just been submitting the planning proposal."

My confusion must have shown, since he went on to explain.

"My big worry about the Council's housing plan was the infrastructure. They keep saying that the roads and sewers here couldn't cope with many more dwellings. If they'd gone ahead, there's no way we'd ever get permission for our prestige houses in Coppice Wood- and they're going to go for half a million pounds each, easy. And the beauty of it is that they're down by the road, so we won't even see them from the Hall."

He insisted on taking me into the office to show me the architect's drawings. The houses looked like brick shoeboxes, embellished with generic rusticana, indistinguishable from any other 'luxury' development. I was giving them some unenthusiastic praise when a tap on the door announced the arrival of Helen. She told Jeremy that he was wanted in the house, and then stood in the doorway, frowning.

"You don't like us much, do you? You're always judging us, measuring us up. What you don't understand is that a family like this does whatever it has to do to survive - we can't just sit there saying we're caring for the heritage. We have to make money - simple as that."

"But what is it for? Surely you do all that to keep things together, to preserve something? Otherwise you're no better than car salesmen or market traders."

"What you don't seem to get is that we - don't - care about what you think. You can tunr your nose up at use beacuse we sell our archives - but you haven't got anything to sell. Nobody wants what you've got; nobody wants you."

She paused; we stared at each other.

"You did", I said bitterly.

Her face reddened.

"Forget it," she said, "just forget it."



***

THE END

Change and Decay: Chapter 13

In what seemed like no time, and was in fact relatively little time, I was on the train heading away from Durston. Parts of me were sore; my head was pounding; I felt as if I'd been at Littleworth for years. I couldn't resolve my emotions; all I could do was smile as I remembered what Bruce Dawkins, my boss, had told me when I started the project: it would be a mundane task with no surprises. He had been right, though, when he had gone on to say that tact would be needed.

***

Back at the archives, after a few days leave, I started to prepare my report on the Littleworth Papers. The factual part was straightforward - I listed the groups of material and date ranges; but I found it hard to determine its value for research. I checked through the Durston Council Records for possible overlaps and duplication, since uniqueness is a critical indicator. The catalogue highlighted a series of Public Assistance Committee files covering Littleworth parish, so I retrieved the relevant box from the shelves in the strongroom. It was a relief to be working with clean, labelled, sorted material; and it was a relief to keep busy.

The Committee was part of the Council that bridged the period between the Poor Law Unions and the welfare state: in the 1930s, it ran the workhouses and children's homes in the area. In this collection, as was typical, the records survived patchily, but there were admissions books for the workhouse and some related letters. The name William Jenkins on one of the bundles caught my eye. I unfolded it and laid the letters out flat on the desk.

The first was a standard printed form:

Application for indoor relief
I, William Jenkins, do hereby request assistance from Durston District Council, being without means or livelihood on account of my infirmity.

Signed William Jenkins 10th June 1939

Another hand had appended beneath the signature:

Inquired of Sheldon - J's former residence was provided as a staff member; he is no longer employable having lost his leg in a shooting accident. No pension payable by the estate. Ben Davies, Overseer of the Poor, Littleworth parish.

And finally it had been annotated:

Approved to enter workhouse, 17th June 1939.

The second was a small square of paper, not, it turned out, a letter, but rather a receipt, dated December 13th 1942, acknowledgeing the payment of £1 10s by Durston District Council to the Revd George Williams for "officiating at the pauper's funeral of William Jenkins".

***

I sent my draft report to Bruce, and the next day went to his office. I always felt that the chaos and clutter he permitted here reflected poorly on his claim to professional standing, but perhaps this was unfair; perhaps there are many dentists who don't clean their teeth, or plumbers with dripping taps at home. It would have to be admitted, though, that Bruce was exactly the sort of archivist the Sheldons had expected - old, shabby, and cheerfully disorganised. Our working relationship had taken some time to settle down; eventually we had reached the implicit understanding that he was willing to let me follow best modern practice in collection management, as long as it didn't apply to him or his favourite collections, the fastidious cataloguing of which had occupied the majority of his working life. His knowledge of these was intimate, and it was topped up with half a century's gossip with the gentry families of the area.

"I know that you and I differ on the question of relevance,' he said, but on this occasion I see that we agree. I would say that the Littleworth collection is important because of the light it sheds on the Sheldon family's stewardship of their lands - and you would say it's important too, but because of the evidence they contain of the family's faults."

"I suppose you're right," I replied. "Historians these days usually have strong political interests, and they will have a field day with this."

"Here's the report back- you'll see I've marked a few points." He handed me a printout obscured by neat emendations in pencil. "How did you find the Shedlons?"

I gave a noncommital answer.

Change and decay: Chapter 12

Puzzled, I followed her out to the corridor. She stood in the doorway and beckoned, pausing to swap her high heeled shoes for trainers. She held my arm and, weaving slightly, led me around the side of the house. She seemed tipsy rather than drunk. Her face, its features softened by drink, was less forbidding. She refused to elaborate about the stone. We reached a stout wooden door built into the park wall. Helen took out a large bronze key and unlocked it.

We entered what proved to be a small stone room; the air was cool and still. The sounds of the party were blocked out completely. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could make out a rough stone cross, 2m high, standing in the centre of the flagged floor. Helen stepped forward and turned to face me.

"This is Saint Michael's cross," she recited. "It was found when the house was built. It's supposed to be quite old: the inscription's Celtic or something."

I went up to the cross, bending close to see the detail of the carving. Helenm, her supply of information exhausted, rested back against the stone, shivering as her bare shoulders touched the cold surface. I couldn't make out the weathered letters, and reached out to trace them with my fingers.

"This is amazing-" I started to say, but was interrupted by Helen's laugh.

"I didn't think you'd really do it - prefer to touch an old stone than a warm girl."

She took my hand in hers and placed it firmly on her breast. Through the thin cloth of the dress I could feel her flesh yield to my touch, and an answering pressure on my palm from her nipple. I stood up and kissed her. Her lips were surprisingly hard and dry: I had expected drunken slobber. I ran my hands over her arms, waist, thighs; she responded in kind, systematically tugging my shirt free at the waist. My psoe was uncomfortable and awkward, but I didn't want to break the mood by speaking to suggest a rearrangement. Instead, I crouched down to kiss her throat, while reaching up under her dress to remove her pants. After a short, hectic coupling, we stood there, panting. Helen psuhed me gently backwards, and stooped to retrieve her underwear.

"We'd better get back," she said brightly; I nodded in the gloom.

As we walked towards the house, she shook away my proferred hand. That was evidently that, whatever that was, or had been.

Change and decay: Chapter 11

It was only now, because of the warmth with which I was greeted by the family as news of my discovery spread, that I realised how unwelcome I had been previously. When they heard that I was planning to leave shortly, I was urged to stay for their party- suddenly I was the guest of honour.

Whether as a result, or because she was involved in the party planning, I saw a lot more of Helen. It could not be said that she responded well to stress. The effort with which she shouted down the phone at recalcitrant suppliers might have been better directed at cleaning the house, since the casual staff they had hired in failed to meet her standards.

"God!", she said to me, as if I were a fellow-conspirator, "to think you used to be able to sack your staff!"

But it had to be said, whatever the cost in nervous energy, and indeed in money, the Hall was efficiently transformed. The public rooms were gleaming and elegant: the clutter had been transferred, and the dogs were rigorously excluded. Industrial heaters ran through the night, the warmth even working all the wat up to the attic.

***

It took little time to pack in the morning - my main concern was to ensure that my notes were complete. I stripped the sheets from the bed and left them crumpled on the floor. Already I could hear the urgent whine of vacuum cleaners from below, accompanied by the chink of arriving crockery. I laboured in the bathroom, soaping and shaving twice, knowing I would be on display. 'Smart enough for an archivist' wouldn't be smart enough today: I didn't want to feel like a crumpled yokel.

As noon approached and the family gathered, my fears were borne out. Margaret and Geoffrey were not just clean, they were almost chic, and completely free of dog hairs. Jeremy, Penny and the children looked like a model family from an upmarket catalogue. And Helen was stunning, in a short white dress, with her hair up in a bun and a black velvet choker around her neck. She looked me up and down and nodded: "Yes, you'll do", patting me lightly on the arm.

***

Gravel crunched; car doors slammed; greetings were shouted; hands shaken; drinks offered. Within minutes, the Hall was filled with well-dressed couples talking very loudly. I hung back, having little to contribute to discussions of milk quotas, EU subsidies, set-aside grants, tax, tax avoidance, tax evasion, and fraud.

To my surprise, those present varied in accent, occupation, and even ethnicity. Those in the Sheldons' sphere of influence were united solely by wealth and prestige, a sort of meritocracy, albeit with a debatable definition of merit.

Food followed drink, accompanied by more drink. Eventually, Geoffrey started rapping steadily on the tabletop, and the conversations slowly wound down. After a single final laugh from the corner, silence fell.

"I'm glad to see so many of our friends here today," Geoffrey said genially. "You would sometimes think that the forces of so-called progress were in the ascendant, in this precious country of ours. It seems as if every time we look around, some great tradition or landscape has succumbed."

He paused dramatically; he was exactly halfway between being a ham and a good actor. "Well, we suffer these losses, and I suppose we must accpet them. But we need not accept them silently, without a fight!"

There were murmurs of assent.

"And so, when we heard that Dursford Council has, in its wisdom, decided that it needs room for another estate to house its workshy, its criminals, its gypsies, its . . ." he glanced at the Indian couple in the audience and paused, "its undesirables of all sorts, we decided to put all our efforts into opposing them."

Applause rippled around the room.

"We have written letters; we have attended meetings; we have lobbied and protested without pause." He sighed, perhaps enervated by the extravagance of his exaggeration.

"Even so, we expected to lose- proudly, but inevitably. I'm glad to say, though, that we have a secret weapon- History. Perhaps our archivist here will explain?"

I stepped forward and haltingly summarised the New Mill saga. As I tailed off, Geoffrey clapped and assured everyone that the proposal was now dead.

More drinks were brought, and with the serious business successfully concluded, the working lunch turned first into simple lunch and then into a party. Ties were removed, collars loosened, jackets discarded; talk moved from money to sex.

Helen, drink in hand, swayed towards me with a crooked grin on her face.

"You can't go without seeing the stone- you'll like it."

Change and Decay Chapter 10

By now, the records room was looking much more ordered. Piles of papers were arranged neatly on the table, spotted with fluorescent Post-It notes. Each pile had been skimmed and quickly characterised by date and content. Some gaps remained: documents which must once have existed but had since been lost, discarded or transfered elsewhere. But it consitituted a good representation if several centuries of estate management and industrial enterprise.

I had seen Jeremy passing the doorway a couple of times that morning, and now took the opportunity to introduce myself.

"I've nearly finished in here now- do you think I could see the current records?"

"Of course," he replied, "but I'm not sure they'll be worth your trouble."

"Some of the properties seem to be missing: I suppose your system is that the deeds bundles are kept with your working files."

"I'm not sure you'd call it a system as such," he said, laughing, "but come across now."

***

I followed him outside and into the stable yard; the estate office was based in an old tack room, supplied with telephone and power connections by a fragile tracery of overhead cables from the main house. Jeremy unlocked the door and lit a gas heater, clapping his hands for warmth.

"It's a bit basic, I'm afraid- not much better that the records store."

He lifted a stack of letters from an old wooden chair, adding it to a pile on top of the filing cabinet in the corner, its drawers rendered unclosable by excess files.

"We're a bit disorganised, so you'll have to wade through things. We used to put stuff away but these days we have to manage without a secretary."

"I thought Helen helped out?"

"Is that what she told you? I don't really count gossiping on the offcie phone with her friends and playing solitaire on the computer as helping. She doesn't understand the business side of the estate at all. I keep telling them there's no money, but they can't bring themselves to believe it. Not that we can afford outside staff either. Penny, my wife - you've met her, haven't you? - she had to do all the documentation when we sold some paintings last year. The research took her ages, trying to find evidence of ownership. Well, you've seen the paperwork!"

I was pleased to find that Jeremy had circled around closer to my professional interests. But before I could interrupt, he sat back and stared out of the window into the yard.

"It's a dispriting task, trying to keep it all together. It was easier in the past, when your land was on long leases and you just had to collect the rent each quarter-day. But you can't make enough money that way anymore- not with farming the way it is."

"I'm not sure your ancestors would agree: they certainly complained enough in their letters."

"Oh yes - I suppose you'll have seen all that. But anyway, whatever they used to say, these days land is pretty much worthless - farmland is, at least. That's why we need to diversify. I'm always trying to find ways to raise cash. But it's a long process- you can't do a thing without planning permission, and that process is a nightmare. I don't think our cities would ever have been built if they'd had the same system." Jeremy snorted.

"I suppose councils have to be careful about their decisions." I wasn't quite sure how I had ended up defending local government.

"Not if it's their own project. We're having a big row at the moment- have you heard? They're proposing to allow housing development on the New Mill fields."

"Didn't that used to be part of the Littleworth estate?"

"We sold it forty years ago, when the council was building up its land bank. we never thought they'd build on it, though - it'll ruin the character of the area. We're organising the opposition at the moment - a lot of people round here are very concerned. That's the file." He pointed at a large cardboard box, its sides bulging with the weight of paper.

"Oh, I was looking for the New Mill deeds: could I check through them?"

"Help yourself."

***

The papers were stratified chronologically, like a geological sequence. The top layer comprised recent Council feasibility studies, consultation letters, notes of telephone calls. Halfway down there was a more ordered sequence of legal correspondence about the purchase of the land; below that there were two thick bundles of deeds and leases.

To my surprise, the papers showed that the sale had been an amicable process, from an initial inquiry from the Clerk's Department whether the estate owned any land it might be willing to relinquish suitable for the Council's long-term plans to enlarge its housing stock. I wondered whether Jeremy was aware of this, and concluded he must have been. The actual negotiation of prices was also smooth enough: an independent valuation had been obtained, calculating the rate for prime farmland and multiplying by the area. The offer was accepted by the estate without a quibble, earning £800, a very substantial sum for the 1950s.

I expected little more than a simple sequence of earlier tenancies from the remaining bundles, but grew increasingly confused, and eventually leafed through to the earliest deed.

The New Mill was not, in fact, very new. In 1760, John Sheldon had exchanged 'the field next the stream' for another in the adjacent parish, and then commissioned a local builder to 'make a new mill with all necessary equipments and facilities'. After 50 years of silence, presumably reflecting work under the estate's control, the family lost interest in metalworking, and the site was leased to a succession of companies with closely-similar names and personnel. These were obviously unstable financially, since deafult on rents and references to 'the works, now idle' fomred a recurrent theme. By 1890 the mill was almost worthless, and the land was rented to the Durston Gas and Light Company. They gave up the lease in 1908, and the land returned to the control of the estate.

This sounded innocuous enough, if reflecting a depressing story of failed ventures. But I had encountered the early gas industry before, when I was working on another archive. The creation of Town Gas, as the predecessor to natural gas was called, was a hazardous and toxic process, generating large quantities of cyanide and arsenic waste.

I was shocked at Jeremy's reaction when I told him this. He laughed.

"That'll scupper their houses, won't it? Who wants to live on a chemical dump? You've made my day."

When I suggested that the estate might have acted in poor faith when selling the property as farmland suitable for development, he waved it away.

"Not our problem, not our problem."

The Queen's English, whatever the comedians say

Seldom a week passes without a comedian raising a laugh by referring to the Royal Family as German (usually on the News Quiz or Have I Got News For You). It is notable, I think, that it is most popular with the generation of alternative comedians who at one stage were a bit edgy, daring and anti-Establishment; it is the last vestiage of the far-off days when hatred of Thatch and Tebbit was an essential qualificatiaon for success. The joke's fulklest form is found in Elton and Curtis' Blackadder Goes Forth, when Captain Darling, accused of being a spy, insists that he is as British as Queen Victoria ("You mean your father's half German, you're half German and you married a German" says Blackadder).

The odd thing is that these comedians would in normal circumstances distance themselves emphatically from lampooning a lifelong UK resident on the grounds that some of their ancestors were born abroad. Particularly Ben Elton, whose father was German, Curtis, who is from New Zealand, and David Baddiel (half German, quarter Russian).

My calculations are that Victoria was 1/4 British, since her mother was German and her father half-German; Edward VII was 1/8 British, George V 1/8 British, George VI 1/16 British; Elizabeth II is the first Windsor Royal to be more than half British (17/32 British).

The War of Wars by Robert Harvey (Constable): Book review

This is an ambitious work of military and political history, recounting, as its subtitle says 'the epic struggle between Britain and France, 1793-1815'. But in addition to providing a narrative over its 800 pages, Harvey has an agenda: the resurrection of the style of historical analysis in which the determining role of inspirational leaders is acknowledged.

Harvey's canvas is broad, so that battles and whole campaigns have to be dealt with briefly. He is much more interested in the mechanics and social politics of naval warfare; Nelson is perhaps his favourite hero, and the book loses much of its impetus after Trafalgar had won the sea war. Minor land battles become a bare litany of x thousand lost, giving no feel for their significance or differentiation. Although writing for a general reader (p. 1), he assumes great familiarity with the participants; 'the most famous cavalry charge in history' (by Murat at Eylau) (p. 436) merits a single sentence. His account of the Russian campaign of 1812 is vastly inferior to Tolstoy's.

But it is the heroes that matter to Harvey. He attacks what he calls the 'Napoleon myths', that he was either a tyrant or a political genius; even his military skill is considered to be limited to movement and energy, and only consistently effective in his early career. But Wellington, Nelson, Sir John Moore and others are also treated in the same way: Harvey assumes that they are geniuses, and then turns to biography to explain their lapses of judgement, rather than allowing them to have good and bad days like the rest of us. He also expects that great leaders should be good people, and feels he must apologise for or excuse their political and personal failings, rather than treating them as irrelevant.

The book is hardly light reading; there is a lot of repetition (so that the comparison of the more sanguine actions with those of WW1 appears at least 5 times) and some irritating stylistic habits: he is clearly one of those who learned that split infinitive is a barbarism, but did not learn to avoid equally inelegant alternatives. There are also a surprising number of solecisms and typographic errors, such as 'rebounds to his credit'.

In the end, Harvey does not quite make his case: the book would have been better, and shorter, if he had restricted his scope to the key events and avoided the temptation to essay biographies of the principal players, tracking Napoleon's love life or the social difficulties of Nelson, which are tangential to the result.

Change and Decay work in progress Chapter 9

Previous chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8




So it wasn't until a couple of day later that I met Helen again. She breezed into the room at mid-morning, wearing a quilted jacket and jodphurs.

"Do you want to tour the estate?" she asked.

"Yes, that would be interesting - I've been reading about the various properties."

"OK - do you ride?"

She seemed neither surprised nor disappointed by my negative response, and went off to secure some spare boots and to gather the dogs.

* * *

It was a crisp Spring morning; the grass was heavy with dew. Plumes of vapour marked our breaths. As we crunched our way down the drive, Helen pointed out buildings near and far, with the complacency of ownership.

"That's Park Farm - the tenants there are the Edwards brothers. You can tell by the state of the fences that they're not very good caretakers. We keep telling them that binder twine isn't a fencing material, but it doesn't do any good."

Rugger waddled ahead of us, pausing to sniff occasionally. Birds chattered warnings of our approach from the trees. We reached the lodge at the end of the drive, where it met the public road. The small garden behind the lodge was largely filled by a rusting car beneath a tarpaulin.

"Disgraceful- we've asked them to get rid of it," Helen said crossly. "It's rented out now - it used used to be for one of the servants from the house."

"I know," I replied, glad to have something to contribute, "in the 1860s it's listed in the land terriers."

"At least when it was under our control we could insist on how it was looked after."

"I'd have thought the terms of the lease would still give you that?"

"Yes, in theory. But try evicting people- you'll end up paying a fortune in legal fees. It's hardly worth it. It bneats me why the nouveau riche are so keen on buy-to-let: they must be mad or stupid."

She walked up the short slabbed path and rang the doorbell twice. I stood back, noting the architectural deatils: Victorian Gothic, with elaborate decorative ridge tiles and terracotta brickwork. After half a minute's silence, Helen turned.

"They must be at work: both the Johnsons have jobs in the town."

"I suppose it must be strange now that so few people work on the estate?"

"I'm used to it - it was in Gramps' time that we lost them all - went to war and never came back."

I must have looked perplexed, since she went on to explain.

"Not dead - just never came back. They found other jobs, shorter hours, better pay. That's gratitude for you!"

I had always had some doubts whether noblesse does indeed oblige, and I wondered now why it obliged such arrogance. But equally, I could not deny the attraction I felt for her despite the horrible views she expressed with such conviction.

* * *

We reached the junction and turned to the right, the main road dropping to stone bridge over a stream. I knew a lot about this.

"This bridge is quite famous - or at least, well-represented in the records. In the 1820s there was a long legal dispute about who should pay for its repair. Thomas Sheldon argued that it was a county road, to be maintained from taxes, but the Court of Quarter Sessions said it was a parish road, so the rates should pay. Sheldon kicked up quite a fuss- he wrote letters all over the place."

Helen didn't know this; nor, to be honest, did she show much interest in the information now that she did. I peered at the weathered inscription on the parapet: "This bridge erected by Littleworth parish, 1831". "So Sheldon must have lost."

Helen frowned. "Didn't you know?"

"Not for sure," I explained, "The papers I saw were the initial negotiations and the proofs in evidence taken to court. The final judgment would be recorded in the Court Rolls, by the Clerk of the Peace, and there need have been little documentation sent to the parties."

Helen stopped and looked at me. "You are funny, you know. You've got all these little lectures in your head." I was unsure how to respond to her bantering tone.

We crossed the stream and followed the road up the valley side, then climbed over a stile in a thorn hedge. I was about to start talking about the Enclosure Act and its effect on field boundaries, but stopped myself when I recognised that this would constitute another lecture. I decided to take the offensive.

"Penny was telling me about the estate office - do you work there full-time?"

"Not as such - although for tax purposes I do. I help out when it gets busy- like next week, when we're having a party for objectors to a planning application."

"So, what - stuffing envelopes? That doesn't sound like much of a job."

"I don't know - I get a lot of free time to ride and so on. I did work in London last year, but didn't enjoy it. It's no fun living there unless you can afford to go out and can time off for holidays. Anyway, there isn't anything in particular I want to do."

"Did you go to university?"

"No, that was Jeremy- he's the one with the brains. My school focused on personal development, sports and life skills, rather than exams, and I didn't really fancy it."

"Don't you get bored, staying here all the time?"

"Not at all- you underestimate the value of being able to please yourself what you do every day."

"I suppose so. I find archives so interesting I'd probably work on them for free if I won the Lottery."

"Yes, I think you would."

* * *


We passed a patch of bloodstained fur on the path.

"Foxes are such nice animals," Helen sneered. "I used to love hunting - riding at will, as fast as I could, following the pack wherever it went."

"I thought the hunt still met?"

"Yes, but it's not the same. They have to be so careful about keeping the hounds in hand that you never get that wild feeling - it was so natural - you, the horse, the dogs, the fox - all running across the fields. That's the tradition that has gone."

"I'm not sure how ancient that tradition is: most of the trappings were invented by the Victorians. I suppose these days that counts as ancient. But at least you are arguing from experience- you enjoyed it. The rational arguments for hunting always seemed the weakest- that this was the most efficient and humane way to control the fox population, that it employed thousands of people, that people would get rid of their horses, that the foxes enjoyed it. It's never hard to come up with good reasons to preserve a situation that serves your own interests!"

"But we were sincere."

"I don't think that makes much difference."

An awkward silence fell and we walked on.

* * *

We crossed another stile and entered an ash copse.

"We had a den here, in a ruin."

"The gamekeeper's cottage?"

"How did you know that?", Helen asked, surprised.

"It's in the archives - the gamekeeper used to be listed as the occupier here."

Helen pointed out the site, overgrown with brambles. She shook herself.

"We used to scare each other silly with ghost stories. Supposedly the house was cursed by the last gamekeeper, Old Will. He had been injured in a shooting accident, and then one day just vanished. Jem would say he could hear him limping through the undergrowth while we hid."

A little further along the path, the trees opened out and we could the Hall, a couple of fields away. We climbed the slope, panting.


* * *

After washing and changing, I return to the archives, keen to check the personnel files. It didn't take long to find the one I wanted. Williams Jenkins had been born in 1892; in 1906 he wrote a letter of application for a job on the estate, and in 1908 he countersigned a tenancy agreement for the cottage. The final document was a doctor's bill from 1938, recording treatment for a gunshot wound to his leg. Then Old Will vanished from the paper trail just as he had from his home.

Overheard

CHILD: Can I have an ice cream now?

PARENT: What's the magic word?

CHILD (puzzled): Um ... Abracadabra?

New word corner: Thermostat

Thermostat: unwanted utensils that fill the shelves of kitchen cupboards. From 'thermos' + 'tat'.

Radio comedy sketch: Checklist

FX: Aircraft noises

Captain: This is Alpha Tango 213 preparing to take off.

Control tower: This is control tower. Proceed with pre=flight checklist.

Captain: Roger. (to co-pilot) Ready?

Co-pilot: Check.

Captain: Fabric pattern made up of squares of alternating colour?

Co-pilot: Check

Captain: Means of payment?

Co-pilot: Cheque

Captain: Inhabitant of Central Europan country?

Co-pilot: Czech

Captain: Chess move threatening the king?

Co-pilot: Check

Captain: Checklist complete. (ON RADIO) Alpha Tango 123 proceeding to runway.

FX: Jet engine

Variations on a theme

Old monetarist economic theorists never die, they just lose their currency.

Old fireworks manufacturers never die, they just light the blue touch paper and retire.

Change and Decay work in progress Chapter 8

Previous chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7


For the next few days, I was left largely to myself, disturbed only by the occasional visit from the dogs as they snuffled around myopically. I glimpsed the Sheldons as they followed their individual orbits- Margaret's from kitchen to conservatory, Charles' from study to dining room. Helen, in spite of her comment, was nowhere in evidence. Why did I mind that?

On Wednesday, my usually-solitary breakfast in the kitchen was varied by the presence of Margaret, assembling crockery and cutlery on a large tray.

"It's the estate meeting today", she explained, unbidden, "the family go through all the business matters- and you'll get to meet everyone, unless you'd rather not be disturbed?"

"Not at all", I replied emphatically, unsure of how to communicate my lack of enthusiasm for meeting new people politely. I remembered the time my careers master at school had asked if I'd like working with people, and his shock at the eloquent negative the question triggered.

I finished my coffee, washed my hands to clean off any grease or breadcrumbs, and went down the passage to the records store, closing the door on the bustle of arrivals in the distance. I worked through a bundle of letters, trying to establihs a date: 19th century from the handwriting, but hard to pin down, beacuse their authors had indicated only day and month. Soon enough, or perhaps only quite soon, a reference in the body of a letter to 'our new queen' fixed the timescale to the early 1840s. The correspondence was an indiscriminate mixture of family news and business, similar in all probability to the meeting running on next door. I reflded the letter, replaced it in the envelope, and re-tied the ribbon around the bundle, pausing to lightly pencil the date on the top. I rose to get a drink, as much from a desire to stretch and become mobile as from thirst.

To my surprise, the kitchen wasn't empty: a woman sat at the table, laboriously urging two small children to eat.

She said "Hello" brightly but with an interrogative inflexion.
"Hi - I'm Derek - looking at the archives."
"Yeah, Jeremy said you'd be around - have you seen him?"
"No, he's the son, isn't he?"
She grinned. "Son and heir, you mean."
"What about Helen?"
This time she smiled broadly and tutted. "Wrong sex, I'm afraid. It me a while to realise how it worked. I met Jeremy at uni- I was doing History of Art, he was doing Land Economy, whatever that is. I still don't know - I don't think he knows, either."
Penny paused, retrieving a juice cup from the floor and handing it back to its owner.

"I come from Yorkshire, from a big family. We're always doing things together- parties, outings, shopping. But this is different, more dynastic. You wouldn't believe just how interested Ma and Pa were in Jon and Emma here. They'd have come to the ultrasound scans if I'd let them. Now they're not too bothered about Emma - she can do what she likes. But Jon, he's the future: one day this will all be his. Won't it?"

She directed this last remark at the presumptive heir, who was currently reaching for a handful of dog biscuits from a bowl on the floor.

"I suppose they might say it's a responsibility, keeping the estate together", I suggested, without much conviction.

"Yes, that's just what they say. It's quite a handy argument, you know. When you want something new. Like this house- smart kitchen units, expensive, modern - that's investment. But everything esle is what they had already". She sighed.

I smiled at her eloquence. She glanced at the door.

"Not that I'm complaining, of course. But, Christ, it's nice to talk to someone who isn't on their side - you're not, are you?".

I shook my head. "It's not for me to judge - they seem nice enough, but that might just be politeness".

This earned a snort from Penny.

"Manners aren't everything, you know. I had a hard time when Jeremy first brought me here. The Spanish Inquisition has nothing on the treatment a prospective family member gets".

Emma methodically licked jam off her fingers.

"And that first Christmas - it's funny now to think of it. I thought - you know - garnd house, owns half a county, posh car, swish clothes. What can I buy them as presents? Jeremy kept saying not to worry, but I did, of course. In the end, he just told me he'd deal with it. Thirty minutes, it took him: a scarf each for the women, a tie each for the men."

"The difference between capital and revenue, I suppose."

"That's what he says. What they all say. You can't keep an estate together over the centuries unless you're careful about your balance. Not that it works these days. No matter how little they spend, it doesn't make enough. There's only so much money in farm rents. Every time we have a crisis, tax or whatever, it's something else sold off, which means less income." She sighed again. "But now I'm sounding like them."

Jon looked up at his mother. "Can we see Gramps now?"

"Not yet," she replied, tutting. "Little creeps. To be fair, they do like the kids."

Emma asked about Auntie Helen, echoing my thoughts.

"I don't think she's here today."

Diane Lazarus and the Suffolk murders: two stories are better than one

Psychics recognise that the support of their believers does little to persuade the general population of the reality of their abilities, and they have often sought validation by associating themselves with police work and missing person cases. In the US, where psychics are fixtures of mainstream television, this has led to unedifying spectacle of Sylvia Browne telling Shaun Hornbeck’s parents that he was dead (see http://www.stopsylviabrowne.com/ ).

Little is said about this in the UK from the police side, although a recent FOI enquiry reported in the Skeptic Express found only one, unsolved case, where the police authority acknowledged the use of a psychic.

Diane Lazarus, winner of Channel Five’s Psychic Challenge, is keen to follow Browne’s example, and has claimed involvement in several cases, including Mark Green and Muriel Drinkwater (see Skeptic Express ), and most recently the Suffolk murders. Although she offered her help to the police, they did not take her up, and therefore she spoke to the press, leading to a story published in Wales on Sunday
Twist religious motive behind deaths 17th December, also
analysed in the Skeptic Express.

The only specific characteristics of the perpetrator were: “a young lad, a hoodie” and strong “religious” character.

Shortly afterwards, a suspect aged 38 was arrested on 18th December. He was then bailed and a second man, 48, was arrested on 19th December, and has now been charged with the murders. So not very young, then.

But in addition to the Wales on Sunday story, she had also spoken to the rival South Wales Guardian, who printed their story on 20th December.
Psychic senses profile of Suffolk strangler.
Since the South Wales Guardian is a weekly paper, it is not clear when the story was written (ie whether before the first arrest on the 18th). But what is clear is that the information provided by Lazarus differs considerably from that in the Echo:

She believes that the man - probably in his thirties - has large hands and is much stronger than he appears.

Nothing about religion there.
Lazarus has therefore covered the ground with the only specific information of which she is sure: that the murderer was a young lad, or in his thirties. If either of these choices had been correct, her powers would have been confirmed by incontrovertible evidence.

If the accused lawyer is smart, he will call Lazarus as a witness, in the hope that some members of the jury will believe in psychics, so that the following exchange can take place:
Lawyer: So you’ve helped the police in the past?
Lazarus: Oh yes, several times : Mark Green, etc etc
Lawyer: And you’re convinced that you can sense the true perpetrator
Lazarus: Yes
Lawyer: You sensed a young man with religious convictions was the murderer?
Lazarus: Yes
Lawyer: Would you describe the accused as such a man?
Lazarus: No, definitely not.
Lawyer: You sensed a man in his thirties with large hands. Is this the accused?
Lazarus: No, definitely not.
Lawyer: So you believe that the accused is not the man who is responsible for the murders?
Lazarus: Yes I do.

This should be enough to implant reasonable doubt in the jury and hence lead to his acquittal, guilty or not.

Kingsley and the Women: review of Zachary Leader's The Life of Kingsley Amis (Cape, 2006)

Modern biographies thrive on revelation, but there is little that is new in Leader's monumental study. This is hardly surprising, since Amis's life has already been well documented in his 1200-page Letters, edited by Leader, Martin's Experience, his own Memoirs, Eric Jacob's biography, compiled shortly before Amis's death, and in various autobiographical articles, supplementing the fictionalised life traceable in the fiction. Leader discusses the problem, and concludes that there remains something to be said of man and works, mainly because it is now possible to fill out the partial views which KA stamped on accounts of his life.

Thus although in late Amis there is much allusion to Hilly or Hilly-type figures, it is refreshing to hear directly from her descriptions of the chaotic, energetic, doomed marriage of the 1950s (previously she was best represnted as a sort of voice off in the footnotes of the Letters). Similarly Elizabeth Jane Howard emerges with more credit here than Kingsley post-divorce ever allowed her, although Leader seems colder to her than to Hilly.

The book's chapter are arranged chronologically, although the works are dealt with out of sequence. The earliest chapters are the best, telling a relatively unknown story, and expertly sewn together from autobiography, letters, others' testimony, and the two fictional accounts of the period from The Riverside Villas Murder and You Can't Do Both. In later years, domestic drudgery and tedious infidelity takes over, interestingly paralleling the novels but otherwise sparse in incident. Although it is not intended as a critical study (Amis's claim to be a titan of 20th-century literature is assumed), there are perspicuous summaries of most of Amis's works (including a good account of the poetry and high praise for Take a Girl Like You, The Old Devils and The Alteration). At times the pace is breathless: the later years are padded out with accounts of sales fugures and advances, mainly of economic interest, and it is in general hard to establish how well Amis was appreciated by his reviewers and audience.

This breathlessness extends to the larger questions raised by Amis and his politics. Two pages are spent discussing Amis's views on race, which isn't much. It would have been more honest to set out clearly that Amis was, in public writing, anti-racist, outspokenly so, and that there was a tension between this and his views as expressed in conversation or correspondence with his cronies. Similarly, Amis's anti-semitism is shown as mild but definite, despite the fact that well into the 1960s he would treat the prejudice as a sure sign of dullness. Perhaps this is partly a reflection of his experience of ageing as the process by which we turn into our parents. But as Leader does point out on numerous occasions, Amis's political views were emotional and illinformed, unlike his views on literature. But there remains the truth that in later years Amis was as famous for his opinionated journalism as for his more nuanced fiction, and he can hardly complain that he is taken at his word. It is, though, hard to take too much notice of the late 60s hippy-hater who had turned his early 60s Cambridge house into a proto-squat of rolling bacchanalia of sex and drugs.

And what of feminism? Amis lived through the raging sex war of the 70s, taking much of it, with good reason, personally. Looking back now, it is notable that the virtues he praised in women: of straightforwardness, honesty, and disdain for conventional morality, were those advanced by his foes.

Leader's prose is serviceable but indistinctive, giving the frequent quotations from Amis and Larkin a shocking comparative verve. The sad theme running through the second half of the book is the problem of Sally: while Philip and Martin emerged from their disrupted and unconventional childhoods intact, she did not; it is hard to read of her alcoholism and death without asking (as Leader does) who is at fault. Not that this type of question is likely to lead to resolution. It seems hardly necessary to lay this at Amis's door, since Leader shows that he had alaready suffered fear, doubt and remorse about this as about much else. Amis was better at analysing his flaws in his fiction than in correcting them in his life, but that is hardly surprising.

This is not the place to start for those new to Amis: they should read his fiction first, then his Letters. But this account raises a series of questions about the novels, while also showing how the latterday Colonel Blimp had started as a radical who instinctively sided with the unprivileged, the dispossed and the powerless.